After deadly epidemics, recriminations afflict Britain

May 20, 2001|By Arlene Judith Klotzko. Arlene Judith Klotzko is the Writer in Residence at the Science Museum, London. She is the editor of The Cloning Sourcebook, which will be published by Oxford University Press.

Several months into the foot-and-mouth epidemic in Britain, the disease finally is on the wane. But not before approximately 2.6 million animals have been slaughtered (perhaps 99 percent of which were healthy--culled as a firebreak to the viral spread). Thursday was the first day without a report of a new case.

Earlier last week, tests conducted by a government agency revealed that almost one-third of the animals "confirmed" by vets in the field to have foot-and-mouth came up negative in laboratory tests. Recriminations already have begun--about the scale of the slaughter, the perhaps unnecessary killing of pedigree herds, the strategy used to fight the epidemic and the focus on compensation schemes for farmers at the expense of the battered tourist industry.

After pursuing a relentless strategy of killing pigs and sheep within a 3-kilometer radius of any outbreak, late last month, the government abruptly changed its policy.

Because this is such a media-savvy administration, suspicions were aroused when one small and photogenic calf stole the limelight. Aptly named Phoenix, the calf was found under a mound of dead animals, including her mother. She had been there for five days, surviving three attempts by vets to kill her.

The prime minister's office at Downing Street was besieged by a telephone campaign to reprieve Phoenix. Coincidentally or not, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that the cull policy would be modified. Vets were given the power to decide whether cows on farms adjoining those with outbreaks of foot-and-mouth are to be culled. Pigs and sheep would not be spared.

The government strenuously denied that the policy shift was related to the campaign to save Phoenix. Infected pigs are extremely contagious and sheep can be infectious yet have no symptoms. But, whatever the logic behind it all, Phoenix and the prime minister shared the spotlight. Just in time for the 10 o'clock news.

And still being ignored was another, sensible, approach to the situation: vaccinations.

What was behind the policy of killing so many healthy animals instead of resorting to vaccination to stem the explosive growth of the epidemic?

As an alternative to mass culling, vaccination seemed to carry an unacceptable economic cost. Certain export markets, Japan among them, would have dried up.

Industrial farmers were united in their opposition to vaccinating. Small farmers felt differently. They valued their animals for more than economic reasons.

While culling was a strategy of the risk averse, it carried with it its own risks. The images on American television of piles of dead and rotting animals and burning pyres lighting up the night had a powerful effect on Britain's favorite tourists, who decided not to visit.

The economic cost of so many individual decisions is truly staggering.

Tourist industry reeling

The Evening Standard newspaper reported that, by the summer, Britain's tourist industry could lose a vast sum of money.

Tied in with the sense of risk among animal exporters, the government and would-be tourists was the specter of mad cow disease. Britain and its farmers had suffered through that epidemic, incurring tremendous economic loss and, even more important, human disease and death.

Outside Britain, the comparison was quickly drawn between foot-and-mouth disease and mad cow. Britain was termed by one French politician "the pariah of Europe."

In Britain, there was an absolute reluctance to feed the pariah-of-Europe image, to do anything that would reflect badly on or cause economic damage to the marketability of British beef. Perhaps this is why the government seemed to listen rather too attentively to the industrial farmers and their anti-vaccination arguments. It feared the stigma and consequent financial loss if British meat exports had vaccination-induced antibodies to foot-and-mouth.

Across the Atlantic, it was just too easy to mix up the two diseases, both of which affect farm animals. But they are so very different.

Foot-and-mouth does not kill animals. It makes them ill and renders them economically unproductive. While it spreads like wildfire from animal to animal, even by pig breath over 30 miles, it is very difficult to transmit to humans. Tests confirmed that no humans had been infected.

Mad cow, on the other hand, does kill animals and humans, and in a cruel and horrifying way.

Americans visited Britain for years during the full flower of the mad cow epidemic, eating hamburgers and other meat products that may have been contaminated. But now, when British beef probably is among the safest in Europe, as a result of stringent standards, the fear of mad cow has blossomed in the U.S.

The greatest casualty

Perhaps the greatest casualty of the foot-and-mouth affair has been the temporary loss of a dream, the English countryside as a refuge and haven. The pastoral idyll includes grazing sheep. In parts of Britain, they may never graze again. And that is unspeakably sad--especially because it may have been unnecessary. Vaccination may have been the better option.

Many Britons view the perfect holiday as a 10-mile-a-day trek up into the hills, often in the foulest weather. Over the four-day Easter weekend and then the three-day May bank holiday, holiday-makers, as tourists are called over here, made a valiant attempt to have a go at their usual pastimes, but many countryside walking paths are only gradually being opened again.

For the rest of us who enjoy more sedentary outings and like our comforts, Britain is as Britain was.